Leaping to the Stars

by David Gerrold

  And then I was ashamed of myself for feeling what I felt, because—

  Because of something else Whitlaw once said. "Just because the other guy is rolling around in the gutter, that doesn't mean you have to get down there with him."

  I had to sit with that for a while. War legitimizes hatred, war is just another way to be right—

  Fortunately, the battle in the gym was the end of the war, not the beginning—

  —because Boynton had locked every hatch on the ship and evacuated the air out of most of the key connecting passages. Fourteen men and women died horribly when he opened the hatches on the cabins where the weapons were stored, and another seven died when he emptied sections of Broadway.

  The Cascade was in lockdown and was going to stay that way until further notice. The Revelationists were kept isolated in their cabins until a squad of armed crew-members came and inspected them. Every Revelationist cabin was searched. Every Revelationist pod, module, and container was searched. Anyone found in a cabin with a weapon was arrested.

  It took three days and by the end of that time, we were in orbit around New Revelation.

  The planet was small and brown and dirty. It was just a little bigger than Mars. It almost had an atmosphere. It almost had surface water. It almost had life. It circled a small blue-white star that was so actinic it could make your eyes water just thinking about it. If it had oceans, it would have had five lumpy continents; but it didn't have oceans, so it was just a mottled spread of cracks and bulges and empty low places. A small cluster of glittering lights just behind the terminator line was the only evidence of human habitation.

  The telescopes showed a spider-web tracery. The settlement at New Revelation was spread across a hundred square kilometers. They had solar panels to generate electricity during the day, and flywheels to store it for the night. They had cargo pods for houses and great inflatable domes for their farms. Even from orbit, we could see that three of the domes were dark and two were sagging as if deflated on their frames. What had happened here?

  "Lack of water," said Douglas. "Every drop of water on New Revelation has to be imported. For every pod of cargo we drop, we have to drop two more of H20. There's supposed to be water under the surface of the ice cap, but they haven't been able to get to it. There's supposed to be water in the rings around Gabriel, the gas giant, but they don't have a shuttle. All they have are two landers."

  "Can't they convert one?"

  "They could—they should have started the conversion immediately—not when they realized they couldn't crack the polar mantle. It's a three month conversion job, and it's another two or three months to Gabriel and at least a year to bring an asteroid back, probably longer because the gas giant is still moving toward the far side. If they wait till it comes around again, eighteen months, they won't have to push the rock uphill to bring it back; they can use Gabriel's own orbital velocity for a push. And don't forget, they still have to find the right rock in the first place. We're talking two years. These people don't have that long. We can buy them some time, but we can't buy them enough."

  Douglas was right. No matter how you crunched the numbers, the answer came up zero. The news from below was bad, and getting worse. They knew we were in orbit now and they were desperately begging for help. Everyone with access to a radio was calling—and the messages were conflicting. Send food. Pick us up. Take us back to Earth. Take us to Outbeyond. God is commanding you—

  But there was no way we could load 3750 more people onto this ship. They didn't have the fuel for that many launches, and the Cascade didn't have the resources to sustain life for 5250 human beings for the length of time it would take to get us all to Outbeyond.

  And then there was that other problem—

  Whatever we wanted to do, whatever we could do, how much could we trust the Revelationists—those on the ship, those on the planet? They were so wrapped up in their own belief that their way was the right way that they'd left themselves no room for discussion. There was no common ground for cooperation—no possibility of partnership—because there was no real communication.

  J'mee said it best. "They don't hear what we're saying. They hear what they think we're saying." Then she added, "And they feel the same way about us. They must be even more frustrated than we are." That was the most compassionate thing that anyone was willing to say about the Revelationists.

  There were a lot of angry meetings all over the ship. Spontaneous arguments. And a couple of fistfights. Fistfights are interesting in free fall, more funny than dangerous—but the anger was still real.

  A lot of the Outbeyond colonists thought Boynton was being too severe. That feeling was clearly not shared by the crew members who had families on Outbeyond. They were tight-lipped and grim, and it was clear that they were totally behind Boynton. Karl Martin said it best, "Most situations, you have some wiggle room. Sometimes you don't have any wiggle room. This is one of those sometimes."

  But if it was that simple, then why were we all arguing about it?

  Because, as it turned out, it wasn't that simple.

  First of all, Dr. Pettyjohn hadn't been lying. The IRMA unit was refusing all commands to prepare a course to Outbeyond. So there was that. Nobody had said it yet, but it was pretty obvious—if we were going to finish our journey, HARLIE would have to steer us.

  That's why they felt so threatened by HARLIE—not because he was evil, not because he was a godless entity: that was just a convenient story Dr. Pettyjohn made up to hide the real reason. The truth was they didn't want him driving the starship because that would ruin their scheme to capture the Cascade, and all of our supplies and equipment. And us. With HARLIE installed in the bridge, the Cascade would be able to leave for Outbeyond whenever we wanted—and New Revelation would be on its own.

  But the question of whether or not we could really trust HARLIE had never been resolved. If anyone had asked me, I would have said yes, but if they asked me if I was absolutely sure … I wouldn't have been able to say absolutely.

  Bottom line, the whole thing was about trust.

  Whitlaw had denned trust for us as a measure of personal credibility. "To the extent that what you do matches what you say, you have credibility. To the extent that what you do matches what you say, you have results. Your life works to the extent that you keep your word."

  All very well and good, in principle, but a lot harder to put into practice.

  Nobody trusted anybody, because nobody had kept their word.

  Everybody was saying whatever they thought the other side wanted to hear. Nobody was saying what they could be depended on to do.

  And after everything was said, it didn't matter anyway—because after you crunched all the numbers you found out that nobody's goals were possible.

  Of course, that assumed that you could trust the number crunchers. IRMA and HARLIE were giving two different sets of answers. Which one should we trust? The Revelationists said HARLIE had an agenda. Of course, he did. He said so himself. He was very clear about that. But IRMA had an agenda too. The Revelationists had made their goals her highest priority. That's why she was refusing to prepare a course to Outbeyond.

  And then there were the people down on the planet. Some of them wanted us to land all the supplies we had. And some of them wanted us to pick them up. The first option was out of the question. Boynton had already determined that he wasn't going to put Outbeyond's survival at any further risk. The second option was harder to decide. If we sent down a lander, could we trust these folks to refuel it for takeoff again? Or would they seize it, load it with armed attackers, and come after the Cascade?

  And what about the folks already on board? Just about everybody was unnerved, but especially the colonists for New Revelation. These were mostly good people—but in a desperate situation. They couldn't go on, they couldn't go back, and they couldn't go down.

  They couldn't go on because they'd sabotaged their own IRMA—and they didn't trust HARLIE to steer. They couldn't go back to Ea
rth because there was no Earth to go back to, and no ship to take them there. And they couldn't go down, unless they wanted to die with the others, slowly of starvation.

  These were very scared people.

  And as scared as they were, the rest of us were even more terrified—because frightened people do dangerous and stupid things.

  The Colony Council went into twenty-four-hour session. Security Teams were interviewing every Revelationist family in a desperate effort to determine what they wanted as individuals. Some of those people were relieved. Others were angry. Some were sullen. Most were scared that they would be the target of retribution by one side or the other.

  And with good reason.

  Very quickly, the security teams discovered that the Revelationists had been moving extra supplies into their cargo pods and cabins. That was why there was all that extra space in the centrifuge, enough space for us kids to move boxes around and make a hideout.

  Dr. Pettyjohn and the rest of the Revelationist Council had known all along that their colony was in trouble, so they'd been stealing the supplies set aside for Outbeyond for months.

  Boynton made a personal inspection of ten different cabins. Then he made the announcement to the rest of the ship—with pictures. And that was pretty much the end of the argument everywhere. Whatever compassion anyone might have had for the Revelationists pretty much evaporated. You might feel concern for colleagues who've made a mistake; it's hard to feel the same concern after you find out they've been stealing from you.

  Boynton had already declared the Revelationist Council a mutinous gathering and had disbanded it, putting all of its members in the brig, pending trial, so there wasn't much more he could do now. He could have had them summarily executed, and a lot of people were wondering why he hadn't already acted; but the common speculation was that he only wanted to break the back of the resistance so he could deal with the Revelationist families as individuals, and not as members of a movement.

  I guess it made sense—because after the thefts were revealed, those people were shamed and humbled. And ready to cooperate again.

  TRIAL

  I was a witness at Dr. Pettyjohn's trial.

  It wasn't a real trial. Because we didn't have a judge—we had Boynton in charge and the Outbeyond Council acting as advisors; not quite a jury, but close enough.

  And—we didn't have lawyers.

  Not that there weren't any lawyers available. As it happened, there were nearly fifty people aboard who had law degrees and more than half of them had passed the bar. Whitlaw said it in class. "Lawyers are a necessary evil. You cannot build a civilization without law. And you cannot have law without lawyers."

  But Boynton had made it clear from the beginning that this was not a court and this was not a trial and the accused had no rights at all. The accused might enjoy certain courtesies at the discretion of the Captain, but it was to be understood at the outset that these were privileges, not rights. Therefore, while the traditional commitment to due process still obtained, there was neither obligation nor mandate.

  The way it worked, each person would be tried separately. The court would read the charges, and if necessary, produce at least two witnesses. If the accused stipulated the validity of the charges against him or her, the recitation of the witnesses would be waived. The accused could then make a statement in his or her defense. After the statement, the accused would then be questioned by Boynton, or by members of the Outbeyond Council. After questioning, the accused could then make another statement in his or her defense. At that point, if anyone else wanted to speak, they could—no more than five minutes per speaker, no more than three speakers per trial. Otherwise we'd be here until half-past forever.

  Boynton had allotted no more than five days for hearings. He began by assembling all of the accused and instructing them. "We are not going to waste time arguing right or wrong, good or bad, holy or profane. That discussion isn't useful. So if you think that's the case you have to make, don't go there. We don't have the time for it.

  "Our job here is solely to determine what to do with you. Under the charter of this starship, I have the authority to have you all summarily executed without any hearing at all. But I am not without compassion for your situation, and I am prepared to be merciful if the case for mercy can be made. So the purpose of these procedures is to determine what grounds, if any, there are for mercy, and if such grounds exist, what course of action we should pursue.

  "Those men and women over there, the Outbeyond Council, will provide their advice and consent in this matter, but the final decision will be solely mine, as Captain of the starship Cascade. These are the conditions of your appearance before this court. These conditions are not negotiable. If you object to these procedures, if you choose not to cooperate with the process, the court will rule on your fate without benefit of hearing. In such a case, you should not expect a merciful conclusion."

  The first trial was Reverend Doctor Daniel Pettyjohn.

  It was embarrassing.

  Dr. Pettyjohn rambled incoherently. He talked about God's plan for man, how everybody was given the choice between doing God's work or running away fearful into the darkness, where Satan's minions waited, eager to strip your clothes off you and rub their naked bodies against you and pull you down into fevered lust—where everything was mindless gropings in the dark, trying to connect, and people justifying it with mysticism and deconstruction and the false rationality of godless evolutionism and mindless pleasure and if it feels good, just give in to your feelings and do it—and if you listen to the voices of the godless machines, you'll be seduced into a world where God and Satan are just products on a shelf, but after you sell your soul, it's too late, and only through the Revelation can lost souls be brought back into the loving bosom of a vengeful wrathful creator, and—

  —and it went on like that for Dr. Pettyjohn's entire allotted time.

  Occasionally, he would look around, his eyes shifting feverishly, then lighting on some person or other, he would single that person out for a vengeful diatribe. Three times, he pointed to me and cast me out of the cool refreshing oasis of God's compassion and into the agonizing fires of eternal damnation, where all of my screams and prayers would fall unheard on the deaf ears of an angry creator …

  It was pretty scary stuff. If you believed in it.

  Mickey was perched next to me. Each time Dr. Pettyjohn started ranting at me, Mickey put his hand on my arm or on my shoulder. By the end, he had one arm around me and was holding me close. Protectively. "He can't hurt you, Chigger. He's just a crazy old man."

  "I know. He's having a psychotic meltdown."

  "Where'd you learn that term?"

  "From you, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah. Right."

  Afterwards, when it was time for people to speak in Dr. Pettyjohn's defense, no one came forward. No one. I felt bad for him.

  So I raised my hand.

  "I'd like to speak on his behalf. If I can. Please?"

  Boynton looked across the gym at me. "This is a little unusual."

  "Yes, sir. I know."

  "You want to speak on behalf of Dr. Pettyjohn … ?"

  "Yes, sir. I do." I was already climbing down from my perch, so I could address the Captain and the Council directly. They waited patiently for me. Dr. Pettyjohn glared and scowled and muttered. "I do not want the spawn of Satan near me. I do not want him speaking his soft words of seduction and nakedness."

  "Oh, shut up, you pompous old fool," I said to him. "I'm trying to save your worthless life." Not exactly an auspicious start, but that was the way I felt.

  Boynton looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Go ahead, son. You have five minutes."

  "I don't have a lot to say, sir. It's just that—well, I'm starting to find out what it is to be a grown-up. A lot of it isn't very nice. I'm glad I don't have to shave; I'd have trouble looking in the mirror. I killed a man to get us off of Luna. I'll have to carry that burden all my life. But if nothing else, that qualifies
me to say that the killing should stop now. Let that be the last one. Let's not add any more deaths."

  Boynton nodded. "Is that all, Charles?"

  I shook my head. I wasn't sure how to say the rest of it. I wasn't even sure I had worked it all out. I had to walk my way through this slowly. "Commander, ever since this trip started, I've been trying to figure out who I am and what I want and how to get there. I went to Professor Whitlaw's class and he gave me one way to look at things, and I talked to Douglas and Mickey and they gave me another way, and I've talked to you, sir, and you gave me a third way to think about stuff. And then I went and talked to HARLIE, because I figured he'd be smart enough to help me sort it all out, but he only added another layer on top of all the others. So I have to sort this out for myself—and the only thing I've figured out is that ultimately, after all is said and done, each of us has to sort things out by ourselves. We can't give that responsibility away—otherwise, we've given away our souls for someone else to drive. And when I butt my head up against that thought, it sounds like a real good argument for solipsism. Except it isn't. The thing I've really figured out is that we're all connected. We depend on each other. And yes, Dr. Pettyjohn forgot that. But so did the rest of us. And if we forget that we're partners, then we're also forgetting that part of our humanity too." Even though his place was empty now, I could see him there anyway—Whitlaw was grinning at me like a self-satisfied old bear. This was his speech, only he wasn't here to deliver it now, so I had to. "The thing is—the job is too big. We can't afford to waste anybody. If we start throwing people away, then we're saying that people are disposable. I don't think we should start a new civilization thinking that way. It has to be all of us or nothing, sir. Even when it doesn't feel like it. That's my point."

  Boynton looked annoyed. He always looked annoyed around me, but this time he was really annoyed—

  "Yes, sir," I said, before he could reply. "I know you know this speech. I've heard you give it yourself. The difference is that when you said it, I believed it. I still believe it now. We ran away from an Earth that's falling apart. And it's falling apart because seventeen billion human beings couldn't believe in the possibility of a partnership that big. And we ran away from a Lunar society that's falling apart because three million human beings who should know better, because their lives depend on them knowing better, couldn't trust their own partnership when they needed to.